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Research

The Cancer and Leukemia Group B (CALGB) is an NCI sponsored national cooperative group whose goal is to conduct clinical trials of new treatments for neoplastic diseases and related science questions. Protocols are developed with intensive peer review and conducted at over 400 hospitals nationwide, in Canada, and in Europe. The SUNY-Health Science Center Network including the Syracuse VA Medical Center is consistently among the top main member institutions in terms of overall accrual of patients to CALGB studies. CALGB conducts phase I, II, and III multimodality treatment trials, as well as innovative correlative science studies. Current trials test new therapies for cancer of the breast, lung, colon/rectum, bladder, prostate, lymphoma, and leukemias.

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related mortality in both men and women in the United States. Seventy-five to eighty percent of cases are of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) histology (adenocarcinoma, squamous cell and large cell anaplastic carcinoma). The well established negative prognostic factors for patients with NSCLC include higher stage, weight loss, poor performance status and the presence of systemic symptoms. During the past several years, our laboratory has investigated the potential prognostic significance of a number of pathological and biological variables in a large group (n=260) of patients with surgically resected stage I (n=193) and II (n=67) NSCLC. Multivariate analysis of this retrospectively studied group of patients has yielded a small number of independent prognostic factors. The following predicted for overall survival and disease free-survival: N-stage, T-stage, antigen A, age, mucin and Ki-67.

We hypothesize that there are important clinical, pathologic, and biological factors that predict for patient outcome and that such factors will be clinically useful for identifying patients that could benefit from additional therapy.